Overview

• Communications Minister Anika Wells met Meta, Snapchat and TikTok to set expectations, with YouTube meetings slated this week and X scheduled for November.
• Canberra says there will be no exemptions to the minimum‑age rule and a national information campaign will begin this week ahead of the start date.
• Under the law, platforms must take reasonable steps to detect and remove under‑16 accounts and could face penalties of up to about AU$50 million for systemic failures.
• Google told a Senate inquiry the ban will be extremely difficult to enforce and argued that forcing teens into logged‑out YouTube use would strip parental controls and safety filters.
• Regulator guidance rejects universal ID checks in favor of layered age‑inference tools using AI and behavioral signals, with YouTube included after a July reversal of an earlier exemption.